ENTERTAINING VARIETIES. 265 



turning the tables against their aggressors. The next issue of the " B. B. U." 

 will probably contain the following counterblast against the recent amendment 

 of the Iowa Constitution : " Happiness never did exist except in an atmosphere 

 of alcohol. Health has no home except at a fireside redolent with the smell 

 of that atmosphere. Take distilleries out of the world, and manhood would 

 sink into an eternal grave. Wherever a healthy constitution has been built up, 

 alcoholic stimulants were the architect. If total abstainers are healthy, it is 

 because their fathers were topers." 



In " graphic descriptions " one touch of nature is worth a page of im- 

 aginary details: hence the realism of rustic poetry. The Ettrick Shepherd had 

 passages of that sort that redeem all his barbarisms, and beat Goethe and Words- 

 worth at their own tricks. E. g., his description of a Lanarkshire snow-storm 

 that cost the life of a Scotch Leander : 



" But the snaw was so deep, and his heart it grew weary, 

 And he sank down to sleep on the moorland so dreary. 

 Oh, soft was the couch and embi'oidcred the cover, 

 And white were the sheets she had spread for her lover ; 

 But his couch is more white, and his canopy grander, 

 And sounder he sleeps where the hill-foxes wander.'''' 



" A false system with a fabulous historical record, and enforced by pre- 



posterously wrong methods," Diderot calls a certain anti-natural religion. 



"Voltaire came before the Eevolution like lightning before thunder." 



" Experience is like a persistent coquette. Tears pass before you can win 

 her, and, if you finally may call her your own, you are both superannuated, and 

 have no use for one another." 



" The secret of every power consists in the knowledge that others are still 

 greater cowards." 



" Our time is not favorable to logic. So many candles need snuffing, that 

 there is no chance for clear-seeing." 



" All men love freedom. But the just demands it for all, the unjust for him- 

 self alone." Ltjdwig Boene. 



Some people seem born to be lucky in spite of themselves. General 



Skobeleff was originally destined for the bar, but before he was too old his pug- 

 nacious disposition caused his expulsion from college, and thus drove him into 

 his right career, and by a series of equally well-timed scrapes at last into a field 

 where he could follow his penchant with glory, as well as impunity. His pet 

 project was a war against Prussia, and the timely accession of a Pan-Slavistic 

 Czar enabled him to achieve popularity by a free expression of his anti-German 

 sentiments. He became the idol of his nation, and died in time to escape the 

 horrible thrashing that will follow the attempt to realize his favorite project. 



There is nothing new under the sun ; even our forestry associations had 



their prototypes in pagan Borne and Moorish Spain. Al Moctader, the Caliph 

 of Bagdad (1094-1117), also planted millions of forest-trees ; and it is a distress- 

 ing fact that then, as now, many clear-sighted men foretold the consequences of 

 reckless forest-destruction, and that their protests had no appreciable influence 

 in checking the evil. The trouble seems to be that tree-felling is directly profit- 

 able and only eventually injurious, while tree-planting is directly expensive and 

 only indirectly advantageous. Forest-destruction has ruined our earthly para- 

 dise, and the scientific authorities of all really enlightened nations have de- 



